South Asian Resistances in Britain, 1858 - 1947

This volume offers an alternative way of conceiving the history of Britain by excavating and exploring the numerous ways in which South Asians in Britain engaged in radical discourse and political activism from 1870 to 1950, before their more permanent migration and settlement. The book focuses on a tumultuous period of resistance against the backdrop of high imperialism under the reign of Victoria in the 1870s, through the turmoil of two World Wars and Partition in 1947. As well as addressing resistances against empire and hierarchies of race, the authors investigate how South Asians in Britain mobilized to campaign for women's suffrage (the Indian princess Sophia Duleep Singh), for example, or for an international socialism (the Communist MP Shapurji Saklatvala), thereby contributing to and complicating notions of freedom, equality and justice. This volume reframes these pioneers as social and political agents and activists and shows how Britain's contemporary multicultural society is rooted in their mobilization for equality of citizenship.

Introduction (Ahmed and Mukherjee) / Part I Violent Resistances / 1. Scholarship Terrorists: The India House Hostel and the 'Student Problem' in Edwardian London (Tickell) / 2. 'For Every O'Dwyer...there is a Shaheed Udham Singh': The Caxton Hall Assassination of Michael O'Dwyer (Stadtler) / Part II Working-Class Resistances / 3. Littoral Struggles, Liminal Lives: Indian Merchant Seafarers' Resistances (Wemyss) / 4. Ghulam Rasul's Travels: Migration, Recolonization and Resistance in Inter-War Britain (Tabili) / 5. Networks of Resistance: Krishna Menon and Working-Class South Asians in Inter-War Britain (Ahmed) / Part III Resistances and the Elite / 6. Royal Relationships as a Form of Resistance: The Cases of Duleep Singh and Abdul Karim (Wainwright) / 7. Herabai Tata and Sophia Duleep Singh: Suffragette Resistances for India and Britain 1910-20 (Mukherjee) / Part IV Cross-Cultural Resistances / 8. Metropolitan Resistance: Indo-Irish Connections in the Inter-War Period (O'Malley) / 9. Negotiating a 'New World Order': Mulk Raj Anand as Public Intellectual at the Heart of Empire 1925-45 (Nasta) / 10. Epilogue - Salaam, Great Britain: Thinking through Resistance in an Age of Global Empire (Burton).